Lindsey Graham: Possible ballot harvesting in Pennsylvania involving 25,000 nursing home residents

 

By Daniel Chaitin  11/10/2020

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee revealed that there were up to 25,000 cases that are being looked at as Pennsylvania remains a state President Trump's team hopes to turn its way after major media outlets called it for his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, giving him enough electoral votes to secure the presidency.

"I’ve got more information. We're now finding potentially that 25,000 nursing home residents in different nursing homes requested mail-in ballots at the exact same time," the South Carolina Republican said on Fox News.

"You can’t ballot harvest in Pennsylvania," Graham added. "What are the odds that 25,000 people in different locations of the same age group requested at the same time a ballot? Somebody is up to no good in these nursing homes."

Graham did not present any evidence, but he did allude to critics of Trump for refusing to concede the election as he awaits legal challenges and recounts to play out.

"We don’t need their permission to look into these allegations. We owe it to those who voted for President Trump and the country at large to test this system. If we don’t deal with voting by mail in 2020, we will never win the White House again," he said.

Trump currently trails Biden by about 45,000 votes.

There are roughly 700 nursing facilities and 1,200 personal care homes in Pennsylvania, according to a Philadelphia Inquirer report last month on concerns about disenfranchisement of older voters during the coronavirus pandemic. As Graham mentioned, ballot collection is illegal in the swing state. The Trump campaign lost a legal effort to ban drop boxes.

Graham has also called for a Justice Department investigation into voting irregularities after receiving a sworn affidavit from a Pennsylvania postal worker alleging that postal supervisory officials hatched a plan to backdate ballots mailed after the election.